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. None of these varieties
of opinion makes any difference to speak of, in view of some of the
consequences; they affect only the abstract objections, which these
thinkers take care to avoid because the demonstrations they themselves
offer are abstract,-with this exception, that if the exceeding and the
exceeded are the principles, and not the great and the small,
consistency requires that number should come from the elements
before does; for number is more universal than as the exceeding and
the exceeded are more universal than the great and the small. But as
it is, they say one of these things but do not say the other. Others
oppose the different and the other to the One, and others oppose
plurality to the One. But if, as they claim, things consist of
contraries, and to the One either there is nothing contrary, or if
there is to be anything it is plurality, and the unequal is contrary
to the equal, and the different to the same, and the other to the
thing itself, those who oppose the One to plurality have most claim to
plausibility, but even their view is inadequate, for the One would
on their view be a few; for plurality is opposed to fewness, and the
many to the few.
'The one' evidently means a measure. And in every case there is
some underlying thing with a distinct nature of its own, e.g. in the
scale a quarter-tone, in spatial magnitude a finger or a foot or
something of the sort, in rhythms a beat or a syllable; and
similarly in gravity it is a definite weight; and in the same way in
all cases, in qualities a quality, in quantities a quantity (and the
measure is indivisible, in the former case in kind, and in the
latter to the sense); which implies that the one is not in itself
the substance of anything
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